News Story

New Bug Tracking System

The new Charcoal Design bug tracker provides a searchable
database of all known bugs and feature requests for any of our software products.

The bug tracker lets you search for existing reports by type, product, or using a
search string. You can search for any text that appears in the report, the author's name,
or the report ID. You can vote for reported issues to get fixed, or for features that
you would like implemented, and if you have additional info that could help then you
can append it to an existing report. The more votes there are for a particular issue, and
the more information provided, the quicker it will get fixed.

If you don't find any existing reports that describe your issue or idea, please feel
free to submit a new request. We do ask that you check the database first though to
avoid duplicate reports - this helps us by preventing the need to investigate the same
issue twice, and it means that votes for your issue won't get diluted between several
reports. If you do find duplicate reports then let us know.

We hope that you find the bug tracker to be a useful resource. Our aim with this system
is to reduce the time it takes to respond to your queries, and to free up more of our
time to spend actually fixing bugs and implementing features. We don't want to sacrifice
the personal touch provided by the previous email-based system however, so if you want
to contact us directly to discuss any issues privately, please
use the contact form.

We are currently migrating all existing reports we have received to the new system. This
may take some time, so, if you want to, feel free to re-report any current issues that
you would like us to deal with as a priority.

We aren't uploading every report we have received due to the overlap between many of them,
so if you feel that a particular report doesn't include as much detail as it should, please
do augment it using the "add additional information" form on the report page.

To protect your privacy we have removed the surnames from most of the reports, along
with any personal data. If you feel that we have included something private on the
bug tracker that you wish to be removed, tell us and we'll
remove it ASAP. Similarly,
if you find one of your reports has been posted anonymously, and you would like to be
given credit, then please tell us and we will be happy to add your name to it.

Email addresses included in the reports will not be displayed on the site
under any circumstances, nor will they be used for marketing purposes, or sold on to third
parties. We may however use them to notify you of updates to your bug reports, or new
releases. In some circumstance we may also inform you of new Charcoal Design products that
may relate to your issues or feature requests. If you do not wish for us to contact you, do
not include an email address in your reports. If you wish us to cease contact with you,
please let us know via email or the contact form on the site. We hate
spam as much as you do, so we will never intentionally send you unsolicited email.

Finally, our bug tracker does not currently require you to register because we figured that
the last thing anyone wants is to have to remember yet another username and password, and the
purpose of this tool is for you to keep track of bugs, not for us to keep track of you!
We may however have to revise this policy if we get too much spam or off-topic material
being posted in the bug base.

It would be great if we could keep this resource on-topic, so if you do encounter spam
or other inappropriate material on the system, please tell us
about it so we can take the appropriate action.